Follow us

The latest news from the studio

Sort

Have you been following Gordon Flores' progress as he illustrates the Milan womenswear collections? The Paris-based artist and illustrator has been busy interpreting his favoruite looks from the runways in a variety of ink drawings and collages.

This weeks Subjective interview sees the supermodel and SHOWstudio founder discuss the ways fashion photographers react under pressure and reminisce about shooting the cover of the December 2000 Vogue 'Gold Issue' that Moss also guest edited. Knight also wonders how the model reacted to turning 40. 'I photographed you yesterday and you were a little bit different,' he comments ‘there seemed to be more of a confidence in you.’ 'I definitely feel more in my own skin than ever.' Moss replies, 'Just having ideas… and not having to be the one that goes along with everybody else’s idea. I think it’s just another stage.'

We’ve invited Paris-based artist and illustrator Gordon Flores to illustrate the Milan Autumn/Winter 2015 womenswear collections as part of our extensive fashion week coverage. Originally from Venice Beach, California, Flores works in both fashion and book illustration. His style and techniques range from simple ink drawings to collage and multimedia, including film and sculpture.

SHOWstudio is pleased to release an interview with legendary photographer Jean-Paul Goude, the first video in a new series of interviews by Sofia Tchkonia.

In a project spanning several years, journalist Tchkonia interviewed inluential figures in 20th and 21st century art and culture. The intimate conversations with Pierre Bergé, Rick Owens, Serge Lutens and Michelle Lamy, to name a few, cover their eventful lives and careers as well as their thoughts about three big subjects - love, money and God. She invited SHOWstudio to edit and release these unmissable videos.

In the first installment of the Love, Money, God series, photographer Jean-Paul Goude talks about his early artistic influences, including his ballet teacher mother and the Museum of French Colonies, as well as his collaborative and romantic relationship with musician Grace Jones. He also adresses Tchkonia's more philosophical questions; on the subject of what happiness is to him, the image-maker answers 'having an idea.'

Watch the interview now and stay tuned for the next in our series with Yves Saint Laurent's model and muse Betty Catroux.

We're introducing a new format in our expanding coverage of the womenswear collections. Stylists, designers, make-up artists, set designers and other industry creatives take on the role of roving reporters, chatting about the shows they've seen and worked on in phone calls with SHOWstudio editor Lou Stoppard.

In 2012 Momirski graduated from Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam and subsequently from MA Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in 2014. She has exhibited internationally at institutions such as Museum De Pont, Kunstpodium T Gallery, Picture-This Bristol and Tent Rotterdam. Her work was chosen as a part of the Saatchi Online collection curated by Leslie Jones (100 days 100 curators). Momirski has also exhibited at SHOWstudio as part of the Maison Martin Margiela: SHOWcabinet.

Living and working between London and Rotterdam, Momirski explores the influence of language, visual aesthetics, and cinematic narrative structures on perception of reality and self-identity. Her work takes the form of film narratives, installations, drawings and sculptures.

There is a scene right at the end of Alice Rohrwacher’s sweet and funny film for Miu Miu’s ninth instalment of their Women’s Tales project that will strike a chord with anyone who’s ever, half-heartedly, faced a wall of cameras or even a single culprit. I won’t give it away but, “it’s the dream!” according to Rohrwacher. The power of a good dress!

The Italian director and writer, whose second feature film, The Wonders, was awarded the Grand Prix at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, told me over cappuccinos in New York how the collaboration with the brand came to be. She asked Miu Miu – 'the right choice because of the irony, this offbeat elegance they have' - to dress her for Cannes, 'I knew I wanted to go to like a circus ringmaster or the person that trains lions! It’s a very fragile moment, no? And they imagined something for me that made me feel strong in that moment. That was the beginning.' In Venice, they asked her to make this film and while already in the Excelsior hotel that’s almost a supporting character in De Djess, she looked around and decided to make a fairy tale using what was in front of her; the paparazzi, the army of housekeepers, the dress. 'It’s completely autobiographical - I’m the dress!' she says and laughs. 'I didn’t want to tell a story and then hide the dresses inside it. I wanted to do a story with the dress and about the dress. Nothing too intellectual - we sometimes need a fairy tale in our lives.' And so the dress comes to life, like a newborn baby, and we see and, most importantly, hear everything from its perspective. 'When you’re born you don’t understand language, everything is just sound so we made up a language that’s all about sound, but it’s familiar enough like English.'

So, what does one of the most exciting filmmakers in European cinema at the moment, make of the scarce attention being given to female directors and writers? This is Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales, after all. She is as direct and unswerving as you would hope. 'I would like it if somebody would do a series of films about male directors. People should start saying 'male' director: 'Let’s go see the last movie from this male director.' 'What do you think of this movie from this male director?' 'Do you know there is a new male director?' Words and names are important. We need to start concentrating on what’s being done instead of who’s doing it.' Well, this director, busy writing her next feature – 'ideas are like plants, you can’t completely abandon them but you can’t overwater them because they won’t grow either.' – has decided that for the screening party later that day she might just leave the circus whips behind, the lion having been tamed after all. 'Tonight', she says rather excitedly, 'I think I’ll wear a skirt!'

A proud recipient of the NEWGEN exhibition sponsorship, Polish-born fashion designer Marta Jakubowski is showcasing her Autumn/Winter 2015 collection at London Fashion Week today, 20 February. Entitled Cracks, and inspired by broken connections and emotional loss, the collection is presented in a fashion film, “Bille”, directed by artist Rei Nadal and produced by PRETTYBIRD.

Watch "Billie" now and revisit other films by Nadal, including the BFC sponsored collaboration with Nick Knight, Girl.

Off-setting the educational, analytical nature of our panel discussions, Head to Head provides a more hard-hitting, confrontational style of fashion reportage. Two industry insiders sit face to face in a pared back studio setting, engaging in a fast paced deabte on a selected show - one per fashion week.

Tune in tomorrow, 20 February to watch Viglezio and McDowell debate the Marc Jacobs show live on camera at 11:00 GMT.

Stylist Katy England invited fellow McQueen friend and collaborator Nick Knight to shoot a cover story featuring rare, archive Alexander McQueen pieces for AnOther Magazine. The images are now available to a admire in our editorial gallery, and the S/S 15 issue of the magazine. Rising talent Stella Lucia (described by Knight as having ‘an incredible mixture of strength and vulnerability, a child with the power of an army’) stars on the cover sporting the exact shade of gunmetal grey skin that McQueen himself was obsessed with achieving in his and Knight's imagery.

Focusing primarily on pieces from the height of her close working relationship with the late designer - the ‘London years’ - England’s styling includes archive pieces from the nineties, some of which had never before been photographed for a magazine. Recognising that the clothes themselves were imbued with narrative, Knight took a simple approach to photographing them, shooting in a stripped back studio that recalled McQueen's esoteric references as well as in an empty parking lot as a nod to his East End urban roots.

View McQueen: The London Years now, and stay tuned for a series of films that will show off each outfit in movement and give further details about their provenence through audio commentary.

On the eve of London Fashion Week early, SHOWstudio will be live streaming the London College of Fashion’s first stand-alone MA womenswear show. The catwalk show, part of MA15 graduate season will take place at the Wallace Collection and feature collections from twelve selected students from the MA Fashion Design Technology Womenswear course.

‘By separating our MA catwalks it allows us to profile the Womenswear course at a time when the fashion industry’s eyes are on London. The standalone show gives LCF an excellent opportunity to showcase the wealth of exciting, creative and commercially savvy talent that our Graduate school produces.’ said Professor Frances Corner OBE, Pro-Vice Chancellor of UAL and Head of London College of Fashion.

In celebration of its 25th anniversary, street-wear retailer Slam Jam joined forces with American diffusion brand Carhartt WIP on a special collection. Designed under the creative direction of British designer Andrew Bunney, the range consists of five classic Carhartt WIP looks reinterpreted alongside new designs. The collection is showcased in Boom Town Slickers, a fashion film by SHOWstudio’s contributing head of fashion film Marie Schuller. Starring five diversely different male models, the short film makes a feature of their idiosyncrasies as each one poses for the camera and delivers an anecdote.

The latest instalment in our Subjective model interviews, a series exploring the history of contemporary fashion photography from the model's perspective, features Kristen McMenamy recalling her experience working with photographer Peter Lindbergh on a 1993, Russian Ballet inspired editorial for Harpers Bazaar.

In candid conversation with Nick Knight, the model covers her status as a cult model, separating her family life from her modelling career - ‘as a model I’m not going to say ‘I’m a mum, I can’t do that anymore,’’ - and being shot by Lindbergh. ‘Peter’s very good training for a model because he doesn’t tell you anything.’ McMenamy explains, ‘He just waits to take the picture until he sees it. When he sees the image he likes he’s so excited, he’s shaking.’

With their signature single eye, One Eye Girl's girls are dainty and delicate. His minimal interpreation of an Ohne Titel runway look removes all elements of detail, emphising a black collar, in contrast with a 'paint splotched' take on Suno's florals and Jason Wu's deatailed furs.

Head over to over Tumblr to view more illustrations and keep checking the Collections pages for more live coverage and behind-the-scenes action.

Named Aquelarre, after the place where witches held their meetings with the devil, the editorial features in the special 'artificial reality' S/S 15 issue of Garage Magazine, in which the covers and much of the content is brought to life by viewing the print magazine through the Garage Mag app. Seen through the virtual reality of a phone screen, Knight's desolate, scene-of-the-crime style photographs become nightmarish, horror movie vignettes.

'I liked the idea that we go to the cinema to be scared, that human beings need to be, or enjoy feeling anxiety or fear, and they'll actually pay for that. Isn't it strange that photography never really does that? It's fairly bad at delivering any emotional punch, where-as the poorest film or TV can easily reduce you to tears. I wanted this series to create fear and discomfort rather than the usual objective of a fashion editorial, which is to make you say 'Oh how beautiful,'' Knight stated.

To further emphasise the anxiety producing viewing experience and furnish the horror with a particularly contemporary slant, SHOWstudio's digital art director Jon Emmony added fake 'malware' to two of the films. Finally artist and frequent SHOWstudio collaborator Rei Nadal matched up each film to Wikipedia links featuring urban legends and shocking true stories, blurring even more the lines between fiction and reality. This final touch cites the mass panic caused by H.G Wells' 1968 War of the Worlds broadcast, as Knight points out, 'in those days people believed the radio, now they believe Wikipedia'.